When I was first asked to write a blog post about completing my teaching diploma in Turkey, I was stumped. For me, the clear benefit had been the opportunity to revisit teaching general English to a monolingual group in a low-stakes environment. However, given that the diploma context was very different to that at CALD, how relevant would my observations and re-honed practices be?
The answer lay within a staff meeting where it was asked whether students needed extra support writing emails to members of university staff. This area directly coincided with research I conducted for one of my observed lessons, thereby giving me something to share.
Why is it important that students write appropriate emails in HE settings?
If you’re like me, it may not matter if a student litters an email with grammatical errors, promotes you to a rank within the British aristocracy or is direct to the point of being rude — so long as the student gets their message across. However, according to research it can matter to members of university staff our students may encounter in the future. Zamel (2002) found that receiving ungrammatical emails could lead to university staff doubting their student’s cognitive abilities. Additionally, issues of style, formality and directness can lead to other negative responses from university staff as shown in direct quotes below selected from two further studies into student and faculty email communication:
There is no salutation, or no sign off. Although the word ‘‘please’’ is used, it is a demand rather than a request. As it is not personal [i.e., the email does not name the lecturer], I would have no worries about ignoring [the email] completely.’ (Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011)
I will usually respond in a manner I consider appropriate with regards to the original message received. For example, I will give longer and more detailed responses to well written and considered questions than I would to abrupt, poorly formulated questions. (Lewin-Jones and Mason, 2014)
So, what should we be doing?
Given that we don’t want our students’ future academic success to be negatively impacted by something as seemingly simple as an email, we need to take a more active role. Explicit classroom instruction has been found to be particularly helpful in the areas of style and register (Fritz et al., 2022) and this input could easily be incorporated as get-to-know-you email writing activities at the beginning of an academic year providing an authentic first look at the role audience and purpose play in determining the use of language and organisation in a text. For students studying language’s role within social relationships, there is further opportunity to analyse how email style evolves along an email chain with participants mirroring each other’s gradual decrease in formality (Crystal, 2007). Outside of the classroom, and in circumstances where stakes are low, it may be useful to become tougher during our email interactions with students. This could take the form of explicitly responding to emails with corrections or requesting students rewrite particularly badly formulated emails.
What do you think? How effective do you think these interventions might be? What strategies do you currently use to combat inappropriately written emails?
References
Crystal, D. (2007). The Language of the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2011). “Please answer me as soon as possible”: Pragmatic failure in non-native speakers’ e-mail requests to faculty. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(13), 3193–3215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2011.06.006
Fritz, E., Dormer, R., Sumi, S., & Kudo, T. (2022). The acquisition of formulaic sequences in EFL email writing. English for Specific Purposes, 65, 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2021.08.003
Lewin-Jones, J., & Mason, V. (2014). Understanding style, language and etiquette in email communication in higher education: a survey. Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 19(1), 75–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2014.872934
Zamel, V. (2002). Strangers in Academia: The Experiences of Faculty and ESL Students Across the Curriculum. In DeLuca, G. (Ed.), Dialogue on writing: Rethinking ESL, basic writing, and first-year composition (pp. 359-377). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Very interesting Tania. It certainly is a common complaint from lecturers. At UWE we used to have sessions where students went over common mistakes and some examples. I like the idea of the getting to know you email practice in class. Not sure about sending corrections…. might stop some students from contacting you after? Not sure!
I’m also not sure about sending corrections! But feel that something more interventionist should be done as the models of appropriate emails they receive during the year don’t appear to impact what many students produce.
Going over common errors is good – imagine there’s quite a bit of fun that could be had with it too.
Very interesting. Reminds me of one of the most recent emails I received from a student where they put the body of the message in the subject line, rendering it unreadable.
Thank you for this thoughtful blog post Tania. I am afraid I fall into the camp of reacting negatively (albeit privately) to a poorly drafted e-mail. I had not thought of responding to students with a comment on/ suggesting improvement to their original e-mail, what a good idea given the context in which we teach. My current strategy is to model appropriate e-mail behaviour by responding in a manner which I consider appropriate. I wonder whether my approach is too subtle; I will try to address content more directly next term. Thank you.
There is a scholar (who I cannot find now I want to find them!) who believes students write inappropriately (particularly in terms of register) because of lack of exposure to appropriately written emails – in which case, perhaps should we just keep going with the subtle approach until they read the magic number of emails?
Nice post, Tania. (And I really like Lady Doctor Tania… sort of reminds me of Lady Miss Kier of Deee lite ‘Groove is in the heart’ fame…) Seriously though, I agree with Sharon above- modelling ‘appropriate’ emailing behaviour in replies is probably the best approach to this- and as Rosa says avoiding ‘correcting’. If you’re doing getting to know you email practice in IFP class that could be very helpful as a way of raising awareness of what sort of emailing style is likely to get a response and not be discounted by university staff in future when students are on their UG courses. From my experience of talking to lecturers we collaborate with on ALLs often whether what students are asking for is reasonable/feasible is also an important point (i.e. getting immediate feedback for something just submitted, asking for proofreading). So it’s also important to try to raise greater awareness of the context and constraints of university staff in a typical UK university setting, as part of developing a better understanding of the nature of the relationship between students and who they are writing to.
Poorly formulated e-mails are not restricted to international students and even the worst examples I’ve seen from IFP students at UoB are nowhere near as bad as some of the e-mails I’ve received from home students at other universities. I think that one of the main issues is that very few students use e-mails these days and have become accustomed to instant messaging (something that wasn’t the case when the two studies you cited were published). This leads to a greater tendency towards informality and (as per Neil’s comment) unreasonable expectations of staff in terms of response times etc. I agree that all students (not just IFP students) would benefit from some support with e-mail etiquette, as well as some guidance to manage their expectations in respect of responses from staff – particularly is they are unlikely to the same level of access / support from our colleagues at UG level as they have during the IFP.
Great post, thanks for sharing Tania. I have to say in my 9 years of teaching in Higher Ed, the emails that have shocked me the most have come from staff or students with English as a first language or highly proficient users of English 🙂 The English teacher in me makes me look past any errors or issues with style to seek out the core message. I think we could do more in supporting staff across the university who deal with regular student queries to look past these sorts of stylistic and grammatical errors too (whether they are Professional Services or Academic – i.e. it’s not always the international students who need “fixing”) And of course support all students in their writing of emails where we can, helping them to focus on the audience and purpose of this very fluid genre. I did this recently with a PhD researcher… educated in the UK and already published, but needed some help connecting with their supervisor. I think whatever we write we need to be mindful of the impact on others and how our message might be received. Your student was very lucky to have you as their teacher and I imagine they won’t be addressing all female teaching staff as Lady Doctors from now on 🙂
Thanks for sharing this Tania. This is something that I often talk about with students in the first week of a course. I often provide them with examples and ask them to write me an email. It also helps me know if they can find their inbox (which they often can’t at the start of a course). Over the years, I have seen my own emails become far less formal so I like Crystal’s idea of analysing an email chain and looking at how formality changes (or not) when people become more familiar with one another.
“If you’re like me, it may not matter if a student litters an email with grammatical errors, promotes you to a rank within the British aristocracy or is direct to the point of being rude — so long as the student gets their message across. ” I love this line!
I’m the same, but hadn’t really thought about the wider impact until I read your blog. Thank you!